How to be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate!

Chapter 6. You Matter

Our age—the digital age—lets us quantify everything. We can measure almost every behavior with minuscule tools, allowing us to know the raw math and science behind more and more activity every day. In an increasingly empirical society, we have a tendency to over-rely on the substance of what we say and downplay the representative—in many cases, ourselves.

Yes, credibility depends in large part on the initial presence and veracity of real, meaningful data. Expertise requires a mastery of the most up-to-date information in a particular field. But when we talk about credibility in the presentation world, we don't mean whether or not the contents of your head justify your presence on stage. We're talking about whether the audience is inclined to believe anything that comes out of your mouth.

We can complain that this is unfair, that we shouldn't have to be a slave to audience perception, that people should make their judgments on the facts and not the apparent strength of the presenter. We can hem and haw about the post-physical world, where Steve Urkel and Conan the Barbarian have the same shot at getting the girl. Or, we can empathize with the audience for a change.

After all, what do they know about you? Perhaps they know you have a Ph.D. from a great school. Maybe they saw you arrive in a nice car, or maybe they read a short biography about you in the meeting agenda, or heard about you from a co-worker. But what do any of these so-called credentials mean ...